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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to graphics subsystems in personal computers. More particularly, the invention relates to an upgrade solution for an integrated graphics controller and various Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) protocol modifications to provide symmetric capabilities to both AGP targets and AGP masters.
2. Description of the Related Art
All modern personal computers (PCs) contain a graphics subsystem. Through the years, this subsystem has increased in sophistication to the point that 2D acceleration, 3D acceleration, and video functions are considered standard in all PCs. The usage model of a 3D graphics controller exhibits a very asymmetric traffic pattern. The processor tends to deliver commands to the graphics controller by writing directly to it or by writing command buffers in memory. While the command traffic may be a fairly large amount of traffic in an absolute sense, it is a small percentage of the total traffic between the core logic chipset and the graphics controller. Most of the traffic is a result of the graphics controller initiating access to and interfacing with main memory. Typically, the graphics controller is reading from main memory. For example, the graphics controller may access texture information directly from main memory or swap in the next chunk of geometry. In order to keep the complexity of the definition down, the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) specification defines a xe2x80x9cportxe2x80x9d capable of supporting only two active device, an initiator (or master) and a target, having asymmetric capabilities.
While traditionally, in order to preserve flexibility, the graphics controller has been implemented as a discreet component, it has been found that integrating the graphics controller with the North Bridge of the core logic chipset can produce solutions with better price/performance ratios. Such integration, however, removes flexibility in the selection of the graphics subsystem. Since motherboard and system vendors commonly use the graphics subsystem as an area to differentiate their systems and the graphics subsystem is one of the most rapidly changing areas within PCs, it is important to retain an upgrade path for any graphics subsystem design.
In a system employing Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) enabled devices, as illustrated in FIG. 1A, upgrading the graphics subsystem presently requires a system""s existing graphics controller to be disabled in favor of an upgraded graphics controller residing on an add-in card. The system of FIG. 1A includes a chipset 110 that acts as the target of AGP requests from motherboard graphics 130. The chipset 110 and motherboard graphics 130 communicate by way of an AGP bus 111. Also coupled to the AGP bus 111 is an AGP connector 120. The AGP connector 120 provides an upgrade path for the motherboard graphics 130 by allowing installation of an expansion card. However, because the AGP protocol was developed without the concept of a three load bus, only two devices, an AGP master and an AGP target, may be enabled at a time.
Consequently, as illustrated in FIG. 1B, when an AGP expansion card 140 is installed, it replaces the existing AGP graphics controller 130 which must be disabled and therefore becomes dormant. In a system employing an integrated graphics controller, such an upgrade mechanism would result in a significant waste of resources as the integrated graphics controller may easily represent over a million gates.
According to one embodiment of the present invention two graphics controllers may cooperate as one virtual graphics controller. A first graphics controller renders a first subset of pixels of a display to a local memory of the first graphics controller. A second graphics controller renders a second subset of pixels of the display to a local memory of the second graphics controller. Then, after both the first graphics controller and the second graphics controller have completed their respective rendering, merging the content of the local memory of the first graphics controller and the content of the local memory of the second graphics controller.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description.